Warehouses are buildings for storing merchandises. These buildings are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport industries, customs, etc. Previously they used to be large and plain buildings either on industrial sites or outskirts of cities, towns or villages.
They have docks for loading and unloading goods from trucks. Some of these warehouses are designed to load and unload goods directly from seaports, airports and railway. These warehouses are industrial buildings and have handling techniques such as cranes and forklifts to move goods within the buildings. These goods are placed on pallets which have a standard ISO sized pallet racks. The goods stored in a warehouse can be either raw materials or finished goods. In India, a warehouse is often referred to as a godown.
Typology:
Various types of warehouses include, storage warehouse, retail warehouse, cold storage, distribution centres also known as fulfilment centres and flex spaces.2
Retail warehouses
These warehouses contain goods for home trade especially finished goods.
Cold storage warehouses
These are warehouses dedicated to preserving agricultural products and such warehouses are also called cold storages. These temperature controlled warehouses eliminates insect damage to products and prevents sprouting or rotting. Goods are not stored for more than a year. These warehouses use Ammonia and Freon compressors to maintain required temperature as it is cheap and has high latent heat of evaporation.
Overseas warehouses
Mostly for wholesale trade, these warehouses are for overseas trade.
Packing warehouses
These warehouses have a specific function of packing of goods. Other processes involved here are picking, checking, classification and labelling.
Railway warehouses
These warehouses are especially built close to the railway hubs
Canal warehouses
Canal warehouses were used for trans-shipment and storage. Examples of this type are Castlefield warehouses at the terminus of the Bridgewater Canal in 1761.
Reference: Harris, Cyril M. (2006). "Warehouse". Dictionary of Architecture & Construction (4th ed.) McGraw-Hill. p. 1056. ISBN 978-0071452373.
A breakdown of all the studies have been compiled in my Warehouse design blog
For convenience, I here are direct links to all the Research topics with proper reference.
- Introduction to modern "Bazaar"
- Literature Synthesis and Typology of warehouses
- Why the 19th century warehouse did not sustain? History
- Case Study of- A warehouse with over 3000 orders a day
- Site Analysis of Tejgaon Industrial Area/ Development Trend of Tejgaon Industrial Area/ Number of plots and their floor area
- Defining site and its surroundings according to theories of Kevin Lynch/ Site Location/ Site Area etc.
- Site surroundings, Location of electric poles and existing site images
- Project Programme
- Difference between traditional and modern Warehousing
- Fundamentals of Modern Warehousing
- Warehouse building types
- Warehouse and the Industrial Revolution
- What is Industry 4.0?
- Storage efficiency with various handling methods
- Industrial truck (forklift) dimensions
- Autonomous Vehicles in warehouse logistics
- Industrial Pallets, Standard pallet patterns and Standard Pallet sizes
- Loading Bay sizes, planning and Layout criteria
- Planning for fire control and Fire compartmentalization
- Amenity and Hygiene/ Washing and toilet facilities/ workplace design considerations
- Rules from BNBC Part I
- Rules from BNBC Part II Fire Protection
- List of flammable items/ Combustible dust dangers in a grocery warehouse
- Rat proofing/ Termite proofing in industrial buildings
- Industrial Shelves
- Field Survey
- Design Documents: FAR Calculation and Building code (RAJUK)
- Concept info graphic, Massing diagram and Volume Analysis
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Link to Full portfolio: https://shawlin.net/blogs/architecture-portfolio